Business Competition Best Practices: Win Loss Research
By
Celeste Bishop
2006-10-11
Business Competition Best Practices: Win Loss Research
Frequently I am asked "how do you get information about the
competition?" Most people are surprised when I tell them that getting
useful competitive intelligence is actually the easiest part of
managing successful business competition. One of the best methods to
gain valuable competitive intelligence is so simple, straightforward,
and productive that I have put it on my list of Business Competition
Best Practices: Win Loss Research.
The benefits that Win Loss Research routinely delivers include:
* Increasing your rate of successful wins in competitive sales situations
* Enhancing your product management and development initiatives
* Reducing the level of uncertainty involved in sales forecasting
* Strengthening top and bottom line results for your business
* Improving the efficiency of your sales cycle process
* Setting the stage for future business growth
Win
Loss Research is a succinct, guided discussion with decision makers and
influencers who have been involved in your recent win and loss sales
decisions. The goal is to learn what key distinctions they saw between
you and your competitors, the importance of those distinctions and the
value they assigned to each competitor. While the focus of this
research is on gaining insight into how your competitors operate and
how you fare in comparison, it is inevitable that you also gain
valuable customer information in the process.
Win Loss Research
drills down beyond standard pricing issues and gets into territories
such as: decision process, sales team approach and professionalism,
company reputation, product attributes, service issues, and handling of
proposals. Although pricing information is involved, it should not be
the centerpiece of the research unless it becomes apparent that it
really was the key issue that drove the decision. The goal of Win Loss
Research is to provide you with competitive insight you can act upon -
actionable competitive intelligence - for sales process improvement and
better results.
Typically this research is conducted either over
the telephone or in a face-to-face interview. The latter is more common
in places and cultures where that is the preferred communication
modality. Getting the results that you want out of Win Loss Research is
a combination of art and science; art being the skill of the researcher
in eliciting the intelligence that you need; science being the
development of a research guide that facilitates the discovery of
actionable competitive intelligence.
As with almost anything
worth doing, focusing on Critical Success Factors (CSFs) increases the
likelihood that you will get what you need. For Win Loss Research,
focusing on the following CSFs will greatly increase your likelihood of
obtaining productive competitor intelligence:
1) Use professional
competitive researchers who are skilled in drawing out actionable
competitive intelligence. They will also be perceived as unbiased,
thereby ensuring candor.
2) Selecting the optimal mix of win and
loss opportunities to research is a reasonably complex task which must
be done correctly to ensure that you are gaining insight from the
target markets that matter most.
3) Development of a stimulating
research survey that operates as a guide rather than a questionnaire is
the backbone to outstanding results.
Surprisingly, the tone and quality of the initial research request can make or break your ability to get robust participation.
A
common pitfall among companies that report doing Win Loss Research is
that they have their employees, typically the sales representatives,
perform the research. You do need to have your sales people find out
what happened. This should precede Win Loss Research which goes beyond
the limited conversation from your sales reps' debriefing. Also, it
defies human behavior to think that the customer will feel comfortable
being candid with a sales rep who has not met their expectations or
that the sales rep will be candid in passing along information that may
be construed as unfavorable to them.
An extraordinary thing about
Win Loss Research is that any size or category of company should be
able to implement this as an ongoing business practice and see steady
gains in their customer acquisition and sales. This form of research is
not particularly costly or difficult to do, yet it does take a certain
willingness to expose yourself to news that may make you uncomfortable
at times.
One of the most frequent comments our researchers hear
is a compliment to our clients for taking the time to learn and improve
from their experience. Once you establish a practice of doing Win Loss
Research routinely and take action on the results, your company will
realize the benefits of implementing this business competition best
practice.
Article Pages:
» Business Competition Best Practices: Win Loss Research
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